Spevak: Responding to the difficult challenge of facing the facts

“I really wish this were true” is a thought that often crosses our mind. It’s usually paired with, “I don’t want to face reality.”

If our dog was run over by a car, we might say, “I really wish Fido were still alive.”

If our car had been wrecked in a car accident, we might say, “Maybe that didn’t really happen. Maybe when I wake up tomorrow it will be good as new.”

But reality usually intrudes. We would have to, as our parents might have said to us, “Face the facts.”

Today many people wish, for example, that Joe Biden hadn’t won the presidential election. But the fact is he did. They wished so hard they created an alternate world in which he lost. A similar wish, to a lesser degree, happened four years ago, when other folks wished Donald Trump hadn’t won.

I don’t blame anyone for wishing. It’s a normal human reaction. But I do blame people for getting so upset that their wishful thinking turns into anger, and I blame them even more when their anger turns into violence.

In today’s world, we all need to work harder to face the facts. First, we have to determine them. Determining facts these days isn’t easy, primarily because everyone seems to have his or her own facts.

People in Washington haven’t helped, especially when an official there claimed, in response to a news report, that she believed there were “alternate facts.” The reality is that there aren’t alternate facts. There are simply facts, which people need to find, which often takes extensive work and thought.

Facts have to be distinguished from opinions. Anyone can have any opinion, and everyone is entitled to one. Opinions need to be listened to. The person with an opinion needs to be respected, but the opinion itself needs to be scrutinized.

If a friend says to me, “the world is flat,” no matter how outrageous this may seem, I’m determined to respect the person who said it. And I may ask the person to tell me why he believes this. But I will debate with him and argue against his opinion. In so doing, I will try to present as many facts as possible.

Agreeing on what is factual is not always easy, especially in today’s world of the internet. Just because someone finds something asserted on the internet doesn’t it make it fact.

Once upon a time, in ancient days, when I was younger — before the internet, before computers — I taught critical thinking as part of a college English class. I told my students I would respect whatever opinion they had, but they had to present facts to support that opinion, and they needed to verify the facts they presented.

Verifying facts could include finding a second source that corroborates the first or establishing the reliability of the original source. A reliable source, for example, could be a periodical with experienced editors who checked the information in the articles submitted to them.

One example is the Journal of the American Medical Association, which has knowledgeable editors who check the information presented by the medical researchers submitting articles.

In the ancient pre-internet days there were more newspapers, too. Each newspaper had one or more editors, who would read, review and doublecheck the information in their reporters’ stories. That didn’t always guarantee a report in the newspaper was indeed factual, but there was a much better chance.

Over the years more and more newspapers, in large and small cities, went out of business. Those that remained had to drastically cut full-time reporters and editors after revenue from advertising drastically decreased.

Meanwhile, the remaining editors, who may be editing more than one newspaper, can’t spend as much time checking the facts and have to rely more on the veracity of the reporters. This limited vetting, however, is better than no checking at all.

Today, it seems everyone fancies himself or herself as a modern-day reporter. Anyone can post anything on social media, without passing through an editor, as a report of the “facts.” Meanwhile, there is an increased blurring between fact and opinion, even by news organizations, in print, radio and television reporting.

Judgments about the goodness or badness of something should be put on the editorial or opinion page. News stories would be better if they responded to Joe Friday’s request on Dragnet: “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

The challenge today, with so many sources of information, is that not everyone will agree on the facts. More importantly, too many people are unwilling to ascertain the facts or choose to accept what they wish to be true, rather than what can be verified.

My hope is that enough people of good will work to verify, then agree on the facts. Once we have the facts, I hope we can have reasonable discussions about them and then make fact-based decisions that are best for the common good.